Videoconferencing and Telepresence

04/30/2015

Many things were written about the new video calling featureFacebook launched Wednesday, April 22—that it couldn’t compare to the new Google+ Hangouts, for example, because it didn’t have a group feature, or that it should be admired for its drop-dead simplicity.

But one thing that wasn’t written about was that the new feature that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg trumpeted as being "awesome" was dreamt up almost entirely by a single baby-faced product designer, a recent hire who was tossed onto the project less than a month after stepping onto the company’s Mountain View campus last fall.

That designer, Rob Mason, pictured below, spoke with Fast Company about how he went about envisioning Facebook’s entrant into the video communication space—and along the way gave us insight both into why Facebook made some of the design choices it did (No mute button? What’s up with that?) and into Facebook’s overall process for designing new features.

Facebook's Rob Mason is the designer of the new Messenger Video Call app (Click Image To Enlarge)

Mason, 22, a recent graduate from England, arrived at Facebook last October. Before that, his employment history consisted mainly of doing contract design work on third-party Facebook apps.

Despite that seeming paucity of experience, Facebook leaders apparently didn’t hesitate to dump the important new feature into Mason’s virgin hands.

Soleio Cuervo, one of Facebook’s design veterans tells Fast Company.

"We have a pretty rigorous process for hiring new designers."

Design at Facebook is a leadership role, he says. The company looks for people with strong vision, strong soup-to-nuts technical and design skills, and strong abilities to drive consensus.

Cuervo says.

"When we looked at Rob’s portfolio and the projects he had created on his own, we saw they were highly focused, dirt simple, and very clean. That high level of focus was something we thought was appropriate for this product."

Whereas design teams at other companies are inundated with marketing and product requirement documents, the only guidance Mason was given was the fact that the company would be implementing Skype’s video capabilities and that it was up to him to figure out what the new feature should do.

Mason then buckled down to the project, putting existing video chat products through the paces, sketching out new ideas, and building rough prototypes.

A month later, Mason sat down with Zuckerberg and vice president of product Chris Cox for his first design review. (Unlike at other companies where designers are separated by oodles of bureaucracy from the top dogs, at Facebook, designers work directly with Zuckerberg and Cox to hammer out new features.)

Mason pitched his idea:

"A really minimal experience with none of the clutter or legacy of any other product on the market."

Mason says.

"Making a video call today is very complex. You have to make sure you and the other person are using the same software. If you’re not, you have to install that software on your computer. You have to create an account. And you have to get your friend’s user name and enter that into your software. There’s a huge untapped market of people who would get lots of value out of video calling, but it’s too complicated. They don’t even know where to start."

Which is why Facebook went in the completely opposite direction.

Mason says.

"If you want to send a message to someone in Facebook, you just click on them and type in your message. Video calling should be the same."

Over the following months, working in concert with Zuckerberg and Cox, and Philip Su, the engineer who built the feature, Mason refined the idea and nailed down its essential elements, including:

No Controls

Once you’re inside the video calling window (you’ve called another person and they’ve accepted your call), the window in which you’re speaking to each other has no controls, other than the standard ones (full screen, minimize, and close).

If the goal is simply to enable two people to communicate, Mason says, bells and whistles risk getting in the way—even a mute button, which you’d think would be a core control for a calling service.

Mason says.

"It seems like such a simple feature, but if you accidentally mute a call, you can end up in a state where you have video but no sound. It adds a lot of confusion."

Placing The Call Window At The Top

Although you can move the call window around, when it first appears, Facebook positions it at the top of the screen, right below your camera. That way, when you’re looking at the person you’re talking with, your eyes are looking in the same general place as the camera, which increases the chance that it captures some measure of eye contact.

Similarly, the picture of you that’s embedded in the call window also appears at the top. That, says Mason, is so that if you check out your own picture during the call, you don’t lose eye contact with the person you’re speaking with.

Making Your Picture Tiny

The picture of you that gets embedded in the call window is noticeably small, thumbprint-sized, rather than profile-photo-size, or larger.

Mason says.

"That’s so that you’re not self-conscious. You can see that you’re in the frame, but you can’t see any imperfections."

Keeping The Video Window In The Foreground

Try bringing another window to the forefront of your screen when you’re on a Facebook video call, and you’ll quickly find that you can’t. That’s entirely intentional, Mason says, and again harks back to the idea of making video calls simple and easy even for the most novice users.

Mason says.

"It’s really important for our members to be confident that they know when they’re being seen and heard. With the video window always on top, you never forget you’re in a call. Cuervo says that, in an increasingly real-time world, making video calls—to chat with family and friends—is going to become increasingly commonplace. Requiring people to install software and click through setup wizards is "an archaic way of thinking about how people want to interact with their friends."

Facebook’s new service, on the other hand, is the kind of typical low-end disruption that Clayton Christensen pinpoints in his business classic The Innovator’s Dilemma—a product that can seem underwhelming at first when compared with legacy products but that strikes a chord with an emerging class of customer.

Cuervo says.

"My parents can now call me. All those years of frustration with video chat clients will finally be gone."

COMMENTARY: Facebook’s introduction of free mobile video calling as part of its mobile Messenger app, puts it in direct competition with Skype, Google Chat and Hangouts and Apple’s FaceTime. Previously, Messenger allowed users to make voice calls; the new feature comes as other social media platforms have unveiled new capabilities including video calling.

To use the Messenger video call function, Facebook members just have to tap a video icon within the app and choose the contact they want to call. They can also open up a video call from within a text or voice call if they feel the need.

In one major difference from its competitors, Messenger allows users to make video calls between different operating systems -- for example, with one user calling from an Android device and the other user receiving the call on iOS. cThat’s an important distinction from Facetime, which like most other Apple products is exclusive of other operating systems.

Video calling on Facebook Messenger works through a mobile data connection and WiFi. This means that someone with a strong LTE signal on their iPhone in the U.S. can still have a video chat with someone in a third-world country that has a weaker 3G signal on their Android device. Facebook is also currently experimenting with group video calling and video stabilization, according to TechCrunch.

The video calling feature for Facebook Messenger is currently available for iOS and Android users in Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the U.K., the U.S. and Uruguay. It will gradually roll out to other countries over the next several weeks.

Here is a video that demonstrates how video calling on Facebook Messenger works:

According to Facebook, over 600 million people use Messenger every month. The social media juggernaut recently introduced Messenger Platform, giving app developers the capability to integrate their products with Messenger, as well as Business on Messenger for business-to-consumer communications.

In March 2015, Facebook announced that users can send money to friends via Messenger, pitting it against other peer-to-peer payment services like Square, Venmo, and Snapcash, introduced last year by Snapchat and powered by Square.

The service will become available over the next few months for Android, iOS, and desktop users. Facebook is offering the service free, with no transaction fees, and currently says it doesn’t plan to monetize it. It also emphasized that the service only allows payments between individual Facebook users, not payments to businesses.

06/18/2012

Combine geek-dad gadget lust with the promise of an easier way to stay in touch with faraway family, and you can see how the latest generation of standalone video chat boxes might have a good sales story to tell for this Father's Day weekend. While Cisco's discontinued ūmi never caught on in a big way with consumers(possibly the introductory $600 price and $25 monthly fee had something to do with it), the idea of a slim HD camera pack that fits atop the living room TV, instantly connecting with similar hardware or distributed software chat apps, still seems promising.

Front and rear of the biscotti set-top video box. Comes with HDMI port and camera and costs $199 SRP, but you can only call other Biscotti devices. (Click Image To Enlarge)

The two Mac and iOS-friendly set-top chat products making a move in the market now are the $149 Biscotti and the $249 telyHD. Both systems work in a straightforward way -- they connect to your TV via HDMI, capture an HD image with an onboard camera and tie into your home network to call friends and family.

TelyHD remote control and HDTV screen showing how you can make peer-to-peer video chat calls using your contact list (Click Image To Enlarge)

Neither unit requires a monthly subscription plan, thereby avoiding the Cisco problem. Of course, neither plays along with Apple's wasn't-it-supposed-to-be-open FaceTime protocol, so if you're looking for a portable video chatting device that works with Skype, Google Talk and FaceTime you might consider the $199 iPod touch.

Both the telyHD and the Biscotti interoperate with a public video chat service (Google Talk for Biscotti, Skype for telyHD) so you aren't limited to chatting with the folks who have the same hardware. Both platforms also got software updates in the past few days, adding to their utility and (in the case of the telyHD) delivering tighter integration for iPhone and iPad users who want to share photos or control their chat settings from their mobile device.

The Biscotti TV Phone system, shown above, is simpler and more no-frills than the telyHD. Biscotti can chat video or audio to Mac or PC users via the Google Talk web client; to chat with iPhone or iPad users, the free (and unofficial) Vtok app fills the client slot. It also provides high-quality chats between Biscotti units.

The hardware is slim and graceful, about the size and shape of an Italian biscuit -- hence the name. A basic remote supports pan and zoom of the video camera, and the latest update gives you an automatic audio calibration routine to improve voice quality. The new software update also allows you to import your Google contacts for use on your Biscotti, but be warned that all your Google contacts will be loaded; the company's still working on a way to subset and manage those. The Biscotti may also try to auto-invite all those contacts to chat -- careful which button you click.

Networking on the Biscotti is Wi-Fi only (and if anyone invents a way to quickly enter WEP passwords using a four-way remote, they'd make a bundle), but the unit has a clever HDMI trick; it includes both input and output ports, so your cable or satellite box can plug right in and the signal will pass through. The Biscotti interface will stay out of the way until you get a call or use the remote. In fact, for some TVs, the Biscotti can turn them on directly so you can answer. Maybe that's not an ideal bedroom feature; likewise the auto-answer setting for key contacts, which lets you turn the Biscotti into a video room monitor by having it pick up immediately when you try to connect, could get weird in the wrong circumstances.

For Skype-centric families, the telyHD interoperates cleanly with the world's leading video and audio chat service, delivering 720p high definition video (note that Skype just updated its Mac client). Under the hood, the telyHD is an Android device; it's got more flexibility and possibilities than the Biscotti, with an app-centric development roadmap -- granted, you could get an iGoGo TV if you want to run Android apps on your HDTV, but that's some pretty scary stuff.

Already you can do things with pairs of telyHDs that you can't do with other systems: share photos (from an SD card) and leave video mail for watching later on. The telyHD sports an Ethernet port along with Wi-Fi networking, but it lacks the Biscotti's passthrough HDMI approach; you'll need to switch sources on your TV to see it.

This week's update to the telyHD platform, the Entertainment Suite, is unusual in that it's a paid (optional) add-on rather than a free version update; it's also targeted squarely at iPhone and iPad users. Entertainment Suite adds AirPlay mirroring for photos (TelyProjector), so iPhone users can simply mirror their images right into a video chat with Dad. The ES also includes access for remote-control apps (both iOS and Android), coming to the App Store and Google Play shortly; lastly, the upgrade includes a full web browser for the unit, giving owners access to websites and streaming video from all across the Internet. The Entertainment Suite pack can be trialed for 30 days before the one-time $49 licensing cost kicks in.

The long history of video calling might be filled with false starts and closed, proprietary systems, but if your gift list for Dad includes "more face to face time with the grandkids" then one of these systems may be just what you're looking for.

COMMENTARY: I like the TelyHD video chat set-top box because it works with Skype's video chat, but at $249.00 costs $100 more than the Biscotti unit which works through Google Talk. Plus, I like the fact that TelyHD can work with Android mobile devices which works for those who are totally mobile or don't watch or own a TV, but watch their TV content exclusively through their mobile device. Another nice thing about the TelyHD is the optional Entertainment Suite which will target iPhone and iPad users. Entertainment Suite adds AirPlay mirroring for photos (TelyProjector), so iPhone users can simply mirror their images right into a video chat with Dad. The ES also includes access for remote-control apps (both iOS and Android), coming to the App Store and Google Play shortly; lastly, the upgrade includes a full web browser for the unit, giving owners access to websites and streaming video from all across the Internet. The Entertainment Suite pack can be trialed for 30 days before the one-time $49 licensing cost kicks in. In my opinion the TelyHD video chat set-top box is the clear winner because it offers so much more for another $49.

06/06/2012

Airtime co-founder and executive chairman Sean Parker unveils Airtime at the launch press conference in New York on June 5, 2012

Sean Parker, an early investor in Facebook Inc. (FB), calls Facebooking boring so he launches Airtime, a new service that allows users to chat by video and share files with friends and strangers.

During a star-studded event in New York that included rapper Snoop Dog, actor Jim Carrey and singer Alicia Keys, TV host and model Olivia Munn and Parker showed off Airtime, a video site connected to the Facebook platform that includes a “next” button to find a random chat partner, similar to the once-hot online video service Chatroulette.

Actor and comedian Jim Carrey (far right), made appearance at the Airtime launch in New York

Snoop Dog video chats with TV host Olivia Munn at the Airtime launch

Parker, who co-founded Napster Inc. and now Airtime Media Inc. with Shawn Fanning, said randomized video is outside Facebook’s area of interest and the social network already has its hands full building its service. Parker and Fanning, who said they met on the Internet, wanted to make it easy for friendships to begin by connecting people who have shared Facebook interests.

“Facebook isn’t helping you make new connections, Facebook doesn’t develop new relationships, Facebook is just trying to be the most accurate model of your social graph. There’s a part of me that feels somewhat bored by all of this. There’s no room for serendipity.”

The presentation didn’t go off smoothly. At one point, Carrey wasn’t aware that the video cut off and continued a performance backstage, before he was called to come on.

Comedian Olivia Munn after several delays, before saying she doesn’t believe in God said.

“This is not how it’s really operating, I swear to God.”

Parker said after the event that the actors helped ensure that even if things didn’t go according to plan, people would still have fun.

He said in an interview.

“In the event that things went horribly wrong, which they did, everyone was a comedian, everyone was improvising.”

COMMENTARY: The Airtime launch press conference got off to a shakey start and even the star-studded event could not save Parker and Fanning from a five-minute stretch where the product didn’t work in demo mode (the real product hadn’t gone live yet). A call to Snoop Dogg took a few tries. When Joel McHale, a TV host came on, the product failed to work for several minutes. He asked Parker on-stage.

“Whose ass are you going to fire?”

Munn said.

“This is not how it really operates, I swear to fucking God. You have to go onto it, use it and then write your blog posts.”

It eventually started working again and McHale got on a call with Seinfeld’s Julia Louis Dreyfus, who then got on a call with The Hangover’s Ed Helms, who then got on a call with Alicia Keys.

In a later call, Helms tried to dial Airtime’s headquarters in San Francisco. But they didn’t pick up. McHale joked to Parker.

“Your own office isn’t answering?!”

They didn’t show off the real, live mode where you’re paired with strangers.

Even though the packaging their work comes in today is far more extravagant, Airtime is still weirdly true to Parker’s and Fanning’s teenage selves. Parker said of originally meeting Fanning.

“We felt like the only people in this world who had an interest in screwing with other people’s lives.”

He later said that with the loss of anonymity and the rise of Facebook’s social graph, the web has changed in a few ways for the worst. He said.

“Nothing spontaneous ever seems to happen on the Internet. There’s no room for randomness. The social graph is actually somewhat stifling. Your ability for self-expression is actually limited when all of your friends are watching what you do.”

Airtime feels like Parker’s grown-up attempt to reach back into his miscreant past. The big question though is whether a celeb-packed launch will help Airtime have as huge a cultural impact as the humble premiere Napster had. Time will tell.

This is a great example of not rehearsing or conducting a soft launch of a new product. Had Parker and Fanning done this, they may have avoided this near disaster. This should serve as a valuable lesson and advice for those of you who are launching a new product for the first time.

Whether Airtime has the potential to really take-off remains to be seen. Live video chat has been around for several years. Le Chatroulette has obviously made it work. It enhances the online social experience, but will not replace regular social networking. Zuck will probably like it provides Facebook users another platform to socialize and share content online. Now the big question: How are Parker and Fanning going to make money off of Airtime?

To use Airtime, you must have a Facebook account and login using that account to access Airtime. In order to use Airtime you must have a webcam installed, your computer should run at 1.5Ghz or faster, have 512MB of RAM and you must have 1.5Mbps broadband. I don't know if Airtime will be available for mobile devices. I'm sure a mobile app is coming. Hopefully sooner rather than later, since nearly half of Facebook's users access the site through a mobile device. If anybody knows, let me know.

07/07/2011

Facebook Inc. said it is integrating Skype video chat into its social network, firing another salvo at rival Google Inc. following the launch of a competing social-networking service.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced a new video chat tool inside Facebook powered by Skype, calling it the beginning of a launching season for the social network, which now boasts 750 million users. WSJ's Shayndi Raice talks to Stacey Delo. Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said Wednesday his company will offer users the ability to chat one-on-one with their Facebook friends, only a week after Google debuted its own video-chat service through a new offering called Google+.

The new chat product, according to Facebook’s blog, will allow users to call their friends right from Facebook. The revamped chat system now includes a sidebar with “the people you message most.” It automatically appears when your browser is big enough.

Facebook announced on its blog.

“A few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook. We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”

But Facebook didn't match one of the most notable features of Google's service—the ability for users to conduct video chats in groups through a feature it calls "Hangouts."

Mr. Zuckerberg said he sees Google+ as validation for Facebook's vision that the Web will become a more social experience. He also noted that Facebook has spent the last five years building up a user base, which Mr. Zuckerberg disclosed has now reached 750 million—up from recent estimates of about 600 million.

He said.

"I just think you're going to start seeing all these different companies building on top of that. I view a lot of this as validation that this is the wave of the next five years."

Facebook's video chat feature taps into Skype's communications network, which uses what the industry calls peer-to-peer technology to exchange data over the Internet between computers and mobile devices.

Neither company will reap any sort of financial benefit from the deal initially, but Skype Chief Executive Tony Bates said his company could eventually offer its paid products through Facebook. Facebook could potentially share in the revenue of such services, although the details haven't been worked out yet, a Facebook spokesman said.

Facebook said group chatting is being considered for future products. Philip Su, the chief engineer who lead the video initiative, said the company wanted to keep features to a minimum at launch to attract users who hadn't previously tried such services.

He said.

"We wanted to make it one click and you connect in thirty seconds."

Video chatting through the Web isn't new. Google began offering it through its email services, Gmail, in November 2008.

Facebook said it has been working with Skype on plans for video-chat integration for at least the past six months, which was well before Microsoft Corp. agreed to acquire Skype. The deal is still awaiting regulatory approval.

Mr. Bates said the day the acquisition was announced, his first meeting was with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Mr. Zuckerberg. Mr. Bates said.

"For Steve and I, that was the most important strategic relationship."

Mr. Zuckerberg said the partnership with Skype wasn't predicated on Microsoft's participation, but having the software company in the background was reassuring. "It gives a sense of stability," Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Facebook has been working with Microsoft since 2007, when the software giant made a $240 million investment in Facebook. The companies deepened their ties last October, when Microsoft's Bing search engine began tapping into people's social connections on Facebook.

So how does Facebook's me-too video chat feature work? Here's are some screenshots:

You'll need to install a program. The install option will popup when you click the video camera icon on the upper-right corner of the chat or receive a call.

As with a standard Skype call, no video launches until the second party answers the call.

If the person who you're calling doesn't answer, you can leave a message. This message will appear in their "Messages" tab, the same place that text messages do.

This is what the video chat window looks like.

COMMENTARY: When Zuck announced that he had something "awesome" to announce, we all waited with baited breath. The news announcement lost its awesomeness by rumors that Facebook would launch a video chat feature. This took some of the suspense from the final press conference.To tell you the truth, I was completely underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Let me tell you what this press conference was all about: Zuck is just pissed that Larry and Sergey have launched Google+. The company that "Does no evil" is still in the social networking game. He immediately responded by blocking the transfer of user friends data to Google+. He got even more pissed off when he discovered that Google+ offered a video chat feature. This undercut the "awesome" news that Facebook was adding a video chat feature of its own. A crushing blow to Zuck's ego.

In order to prop-up his crushed ego, Zuck announced that Google now has 750 million users, something that he never does. That has been Zuck's modus operandi--don't feed the media any information about Facebook's real numbers. This is nothing but an "intimidation statement" pure and simple. Those numbers are all bullshit. According to my estimate, Facebook reached a critical inflection point sometime in 2010 when user growth entered a prolonged period of slower growth in users and advertising revenues. It's membership is no longer growing exponentially because many geographical markets where Facebook has penetrated are now saturated. I estimated Facebook would do 760 million by the end of 2011, so when Zuck reported that 750 million figure I could not believe it, and I still don't. Facebook is losing users, not gaining them.

By making this historic announcement that Facebook now has 750 million users, Zuck is setting himself up for criticism when Facebook has their IPO sometime in early 2012. Then we will know the real truth about Facebook's numbers.

07/05/2011

Earlier this week while visiting Seattle, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tipped off Seattle press that the company would be launching an “awesome” new product next week that has been built by Facebook’s Seattle team. The press invitations to that event went out today, saying nothing more than

And he’s right. This isn’t the main project that team is working on, but next week, says a source with knowledge of the partnership, Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that works in browser. Suddenly those chat icons in the invitation have a lot more meaning.

The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component. It’s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype. But it’s clear that there’s very deep integration between the products, and from the user’s perspective, the product will be an in browser experience.

But this is something else entirely. The partnership could substantially increase Skype usage. Facebook has more than 750 million active users. Currently Skype has just 170 million. And it will certainly help Facebook become even stickier for users as they start to have voice and video chat as an option to communicate.

And this also brings Facebook even closer to Microsoft, which is a Facebook shareholder and has a pending acquisition of Skype. The guys in Redmond must be smiling today, something that happens far too infrequently at Microsoft HQ.

COMMENTARY: Zuck, if you are reading this, I didn't get my invitation to your "awesome" new product event. Can I bring a chick and a bottle of wine? How about telling is how many users you actually have. I'm so tired of hearing you have 750 million.

Whoops, don't look now, but you have less users. Thanks, Zuck.

Sick of Facebook's lack of respect for your data? Add your name and commit to quit!

06/08/2011

Video networking is undergoing a transition similar to what happened to legacy phone networks when VoIP appeared.

And one of the leaders behind that transition is Vidyo Inc., a New Jersey company whose video conferencing software is able to transmit high definition images with near zero latency across the Internet by anticipating the amount of available bandwidth and degrading the picture to match, avoiding the blocky-looking pictures that plague low-end conferencing like Skype.

It’s also far cheaper than video conferencing systems from Cisco Systems Inc. and Polycom Inc., which, like legacy, copper-based phone systems, require a dedicated network connection and specialized hardware to send the video signals. With Vidyo, all a customer needs is a Vidyo Router, which is built with off-the-shelf hardware, in its data center and its decoder software installed on any computer, tablet or phone.

That inexpensive software and more flexible connection is enabling the company to gain early ground in the video conferencing market as well as open up live video to host applications that weren’t possible because of the high price of enterprise video conferencing systems and the low quality of other Internet-based systems.

VidyoMobile™ delivers telepresence-quality multipoint video conferencing on iOS (Apple iPhone and iPad) or Android based smart phones and tablet devices. As an integrated endpoint in the VidyoConferencing™ solution, VidyoMobile delivers much-needed error resiliency and low latency video communication for today’s increasingly mobile enterprises. An intuitive interface and simple commands make it easy for VidyoMobile users to participate and share data with other mobile, desktop or room system endpoints.

Checkout VidiyoMobile on the iPad 2:

Vidyo was founded to bring the high-quality of expensive in room video conferencing systems to desktop conferencing, but today it’s announcing plans to enter the high end of the video conferencing space with a multi-screen telepresence product that consists of up to 20 screens (most competing products are limited to three or four screens.) Customers can get a set-up with four screens for $44,000, compared with similar sized deployments from Cisco and Polycom that range from $300,000 to $500,000.

Though Vidyo’s not the only company to build products around what’s called Scalable Video Coding, an emerging video compression standard, in person the products are impressive as the differences in images coming from a laptop camera compared to those from one of Vidyo’s room systems are negligible — both have enough clarity to know which employee is sweating through a meeting — leaving competitors little room to improve on the video quality.

But its competition won’t even be able to come close to that, said Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s chief executive and co-founder. While the company is glad others are adopting the standard since it will allow Vidyo’s products to interoperate with systems from other vendors, Shapiro believes the quality won’t match Vidyo’s unless they willfully infringe on its patents.

The company has been able to expand into new markets where traditional video conferencing hasn’t had a presence because of Vidyo’s ability to run over the Internet and to get its software on any device. In health care it’s been used to connect stroke victims with medical experts to make sure they receive the proper treatment, monitor patients’ progress from their homes and allow family members to witness a live birth.

The company has also spent almost two years building VidyoCast, a version of its product that enables news and sports shows to replace expensive trucks full of equipment and remote production staff with nothing more than a laptop, a camera and a 4G wireless card, resulting in a picture that matches the quality of what a television station would normally need to rent time on a satellite to transmit.

It also envisions applications such as operations management in manufacturing, coordinating disaster relief and education — it’s been used by Arizona State University to enable students to participate in research by getting instruction directly from biologists as they work in the Panamanian jungles.

Shapiro wouldn’t disclose Vidyo’s revenue, but he said the company’s sales are growing 20% per quarter. Vidyo is nearing 150 employees and expects to add another 20 to 30 employees across all departments very shortly.

Vidyo was seeded back in 2005 by Sevin Rosen Funds. It has since raised a total of $74 million with investors such as Four Rivers Group, Menlo Ventures, Rho Ventures and Star Ventures joining the syndicate over the years.

COMMENTARY: What's not to like with Vidyo's disruptive videoconferencing technology. Vidyo's integration with mobile devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad and Android phones is quite exciting and differentiates it from its competition. Everything is going mobile, and Vidyo has the product for today's mobile workforce. Vidyo's lower costs and high quality HD video streams and multi-point capababilities make it a definite threat to existing industry leaders Cisco (Tandberg) and Polycom which enterprise videoconference space.

According to Ovum, global business spending on video conferencing will reach $3.8 billion in 2016, driven by an increasing focus on cost-cutting and productivity.

In a new forecast and report, the independent telecoms analyst predicts that revenues from business video conferencing will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.79 per cent from 2011 to 2016, making it one of the fastest growing markets in ICT.

In a recent study, Infonetics estimated that the worldwide videoconferencing market size will reach $5 billion by 2015. According to Infonetics, the global videoconferencing market size was $2.2 billion in 2010, up 18% year over year. Earlier, Gartner predicted an even rosier picture that videoconferencing market size will reach $8.6 billion by 2015.

The two major players in this market are Polycom Inc. (NASDAQ:PLCM) and Cisco System Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), which gains a major foothold after acquiring Tandberg TV. These two entities together commands more than 80% of the global videoconferencing market with almost equal share between them. However, as of now, Polycom remains the only pure play telepresence solutions provider, which is yet to collaborate with another company. Other telepresence or high-end videoconference competitors include Aastra, Avaya, Grandstream, Huawei, Kedacom, Lifesize, Magor, Microsoft, Radvision, Sony, Teliris, Vidyo, ZTE, and others.

Business spending on immersive video conferencing, often called telepresence – high-end video conferencing carried out in custom-built rooms where participants can see each other in life-size images – will grow even faster. Ovum predicts that telepresence will grow at a CAGR of 19.49 per cent over the same five-year period to become a $1.1bn market in 2016. Major orders for telepresence have already been signed by many global organisations, including HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline and News Corporation, whose executives are using the technology for highly interactive meetings as a replacement for traveling to face-to-face meetings.

Richard Thurston, Ovum analyst and author of the report, commented:

"Enterprises are seizing the huge opportunity that video conferencing offers them to cut costs and improve productivity by reducing business travel. They are starting to use video conferencing much more frequently because of ongoing economic concerns, continued efforts to reduce their carbon footprint, enhancements in video technology and price reductions that are improving the business case. The next five years will see solid increases in expenditure from businesses in every region around the globe."

"The improved quality of telepresence in terms of both visual and audio quality is resonating strongly with many large businesses," continued Thurston. "But these systems are complex to manage, and we forecast that businesses will opt for third-party managed services from operators, systems integrators and equipment vendors to help them with their telepresence installations." Accordingly, Ovum’s forecast shows that business spending on managed services will increase at a CAGR of 11.5 per cent from 2011 to 2016.